Ascend partnering with Northvolt to develop a next level leadership program

The front-running company Northvolt has a bold and simple plan – to enable the future of energy by developing the world’s greenest battery cell and establishing a European supply of batteries. With a mission to deliver batteries with an 80% lower carbon footprint than those made using coal energy, Northvolt is manufacturing its batteries with clean energy. The Swedish-based company was founded in 2016 and is growing rapidly, with 2500 employees today.

In the strive to enable the future of energy, an important ingredient is to succeed with leadership during scale-up. Therefore, Northvolt has, together with Ascend, developed a leadership program covering:

• What motivates us, and how to create a motivating environment. Multiplier’s behaviour, how you as a leader can get more out of every person in your team by shifting your leadership. 
• Accidental diminishers behaviour that focuses on what of your natural positive behaviours could have a diminishing effect instead. 
• How to work with coaching and decision-making to strengthen your team. 
• OKR steering and implementation with a focus on how to move from output to outcome and get better results in your organization.

Being part of the multiplier program has been a great opportunity to talk about leadership, get new insights and reflect on myself as a multiplier as well as my accidental diminishers. It has made me more self aware, which is a key factor to become a better leader, as well created an opportunity to get to know even more fellow leaders within Northvolt.

Maria Åstrand, Vice President Active Material

The program runs for all senior leaders and the executive management team within Northvolt. The ambition of the program is to set the leadership framework for Northvolt and enable all senior leaders to get adequate tools and skills to lead the company efficiently. The program has several clinics where the participants are introduced to different objectives and challenged in exercises and discussions. In addition, each leader has one-to-one coaching to get support on how to tackle specific challenges and grow as a leader. We are proud to say that the leadership program is performing well, providing participants with real challenges to train for and learn from. As three participants from the program say:

“I have undergone many leadership trainings, but this is the best and most practically useful I have ever experienced”

“Great program, I really hope it reaches a broad audience at Northvolt”

“This has been awesome, hands-on learnings and great to get better aligned with colleagues how we lead at Northvolt”